We have decided to start our own blog and share with you what we love.

This will be a journey in the unknown for, hopefully fun and interesting! 

We will be posting Karin's paintings - all paintings are pastel paintings if not specified otherwise - and work of other painters we like. We will also be sharing poetry by Ken and music we both like.

Morning in Uffing 23,5 x 29,5 cm

LOOKING THE OTHER WAY IN BERLIN

A beautiful, stiff-shouldered

girl crosses the street, and we have

a parade of isolation and indifference

on two legs

hot wet wind ruffling four or five shades

of green in the park she’s walking through. Not a touch

of sway in those shoulders, wearing a skirt and a large

white bandage, gauze, I think, just below her right knee,

everything about her tightly packaged, seemingly

under control, every future decision

already made, so that in a sense she could 

check out of her life temporarily

slip away body and soul

to a garlic festival in California

or a camel race in Marrakesh

and nobody would notice, everything going as planned,

and through it all her blonde hair hanging straight as a Wasserfall.

She looks up, this simulacra, only to catch me

looking the other way.

As if in retribution for my lack of courage

or surplus of discretion or whatever it was

and always a sucker for the vaguely karmic

signals that chance loves to torment us with

a cyclist tries to run me over.

A broad street, plenty of room, and as I run for the gutter

he homes in on me, no other traffic in sight. I feel like

I’m in Pamplona, fending off bulls with a rolled up newspaper.

One or two minutes after avoiding collision

I wonder what the man and woman on their second floor balcony

are thinking eating their breakfast ignoring my stare,

ignoring my shock and outrage, witnesses

to something that almost happened, just minding their own business.

The man, probably a retired cop or taxi driver, wearing a white

tank-top, and the woman, in some flimsy thing

with yellow and pink flowers on it, a dressing gown, and who

once worked in a department store, I’m sure of this, and was rude

to customers for nearly thirty-five years. People here

don’t mind being viewed half-dressed on their

little balconies drinking strong black coffee,

eating three minute eggs, looking the other way when it suits them.

Kenneth Burns

Portishead: Roads